Director John Hillcoat has yet to make a major box-office hit. The director behind Lawless, The Road, and the incredible 2005 western, The Proposition, makes bleak and brutal movies about the violent side of humanity. If this Triple 9 red band trailer is any indication, though, he may have finally brought his sensibility to a commercial project. Watch the Triple 9 Red Band Trailer now after the jump.

Briefly:John Hillcoat (Lawless, The Proposition) can dredge whatever material he wants up out of the depths of his mind and it probably won’t generate the ridiculous controversy set in motion by his thoroughly non-controversial Super Bowl Coke ad. So the film Triple Nine, about “a group of crooked cops who plan to kill one of their own so they can cover up a major heist,” probably won’t move the needle in a way even vaguely like the Coke ad did.

But it will have a great cast: Kate Winslet has signed on for the long-gestating picture. She joins a cast that still includes Casey Affleck and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who have been attached to the film for a while. Matt Cook scripted, and as far as we know his draft remains the basis for the film. [Variety]

Update:Michael B. Jordan, who had been linked to the film last year, has also been confirmed as being in talks, and Deadline reports that Aaron Paul,Teresa Palmer, Gal Gadot, and Michael Pena are also in talks to join.

Three of this year’s hottest stars are teaming up for director John Hillcoat. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B. Jordan, and Casey Affleck have just boarded Hillcoat’s crime drama Triple Nine, joining the previously announced Christoph Waltz and Cate Blanchett.

That’s a cast to rival Hillcoat’s last star-studded affair, the bootlegging pic Lawless. Which is really saying something, since the roster for that one included Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Dane DeHaan, and Guy Pearce. More about Triple Nine, including Ejiofor, Jordan, and Affleck’s roles, after the jump.

In 2010, after the original incarnation of John Hillcoat‘s The Wettest County had collapsed, the director was eyeing the Black List script Triple Nine, with Shia LaBeoufattached to star. The Matt Cooke script sounds like a taut cop/heist thriller, and as such a slight departure for Hillcoat — it would be a more overtly modern film, if nothing else, than The Proposition or The Road, the movies for which he is best known.

But The Wettest County (then called The Promised Land) came back to life thanks to the interest of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, and the film is now complete and awaiting a release later this year. Now there is a minor suggestion — very minor — that Triple Nine may in the works once more with Hillcoat at the helm, and now housed at Annapurna. Read More »

OK, don’t get too worried yet: this is just talk of interest in a film, not even ‘attachment’ or anything else. But John Hillcoat and Shia LaBeouf were talking about working together earlier this year when The Promised Land, based on the novel The Wettest County in the World seemed like a going concern, before it went to pieces.

Now the two are evidently interested in a crime drama spec script called Triple Nine. Read More »